The invention relates to a plastic profile for the gap sealing of two car body parts of vehicles, especially for repair enamelling work on vehicles, with an adhesive agent for the removable attachment of the strip-shaped plastic profile to a surface.
For the preparation for example of a car body for repair enamelling, it is generally necessary to mask certain parts or fields so that these parts do not get contact with a spray enamel when enamelling later on. Adhesive strips, plastic strips, joint sealing strips and/or foam strips are appropriate means for this purpose.
For the repair enamelling of vehicles, in most cases, only a part of the car body is repaired. Such partial repairs come by estimation to 90% in an automotive paint shop as against 10% of all vehicle enamelling.
For this purpose, parts of a vehicle have to be masked with paper, foil or a correspondingly appropriate masking means so that only the part to be repaired is enamelled. The delimitations take place almost always in the area of joints. But for this purpose, it is necessary that these joints are protected against penetrating paint mist.
Thus the DE 41 06 960 A1 describes a device for the temporary bridging over of car body joints and gaps or the like to avoid the penetration of abrasive means or of enamel particles during the corresponding treatment of car bodies with at least one adhesive coating for fixing to car body elements. For this purpose, the device is configured as an approximately triangular solid profile made of a flexible foam plastic, of rubber or the like with an adhesive coating on at least one of the three sides. However, this device has the drawback according to which, for certain fitting positions, a filling material applied before enamelling concentrates in edge areas of gaps of car body parts sealed with this device but that this filling material is not completely covered with enamel during the enamelling step. After removal of the device, a strip is formed in the colour of the filling material, thus in another colour than that of the applied enamel. The term xe2x80x9cfilling materialxe2x80x9d designates for example a filler applied beforehand for levelling up the unevenness of a surface to be enamelled.
The EP 0 365 510 A1 describes a method and a means for masking at least one part of a surface to be treated, whereby an element which is resistant to surface treatment, is removably fixed on the part of said surface and is removed after completion of the treatment. A compressible padding is applied as an element on at least one part of the irregularity on the surface, whereby the padding can be adapted to the irregularity onto which it is applied. This padding is a round profile. The contact points between the padding and a respective car body part are however placed very near by the gap between the car body parts and are thus greatly subject to an enamel mist. At these points, there are more often undesirable edge developments, since the shape of the contact points further supports an aggregation of enamel particles.
The aim of this invention is to make available an improved plastic profile of the above mentioned type which eliminates the above mentioned drawbacks, whereby in particular the development of edges due to the enamel mist applied to the contact points and contact areas between the plastic profile and the car body parts is to be avoided, i.e. an enamel concentration in the edge area is to be prevented.
This aim is achieved by a plastic profile of the above mentioned type with the characteristics indicated in claim 1.
For this purpose, the invention provides for a plastic profile that this plastic profile is configured with a square or a rectangular cross section, at least one corner of the rectangular cross section being configured rounded, namely either in form of a quarter circle or in form of a half-circle, the half-circle profile extending then over the whole side running transversely to the profile longitudinal direction.
A plastic profile with such a configuration is used or handled for gap sealing as follows:
(a) Fixing of the plastic profile in a gap area by means of the adhesive means on the fixed car body part, the movable car body part being in an opened state,
(b) Closing of the movable car body part,
(c) Pressing in of the plastic profile into the gap to be sealed by compressing it and
(d) Further pressing in of the plastic profile into the gap to be sealed in such a manner that the bow-shaped configured side of the plastic profile is set back by a predetermined length into the gap to be sealed.
This has the advantage that the development of edges due to applied enamel is efficiently avoided when enamelling, i.e. there is no concentration of enamel in the edge area.
The use of the plastic profile takes place in such a way that the rounded corner of the plastic profile is placed on the fixed car body part in such a way that a contact point of the rounded corner with the fixed car body part is spaced from the gap by a length L, the length L being bigger than the width of the gap.
This has the advantage that a risk of edge development at the contact points between the plastic profile and the car body parts is efficiently reduced, since these contact points are spaced from the gap by a substantial extent and that thus enamel mist cannot directly come into the relatively big hollow space between the gap and the plastic profile to these contact points, but only when deeply penetrating. In other words, the gap protects the contact points from the enamel mist through its substantially smaller extent concerning the distance of the contact points from the gap.
Because the length L is chosen such that the surface of the hollow space between the gap and the plastic profile is four times bigger than the gap itself, we obtain the advantage that an enamel precipitation in the hollow space is approximately four times as little as on the surfaces to be enamelled.
Preferable further improvements of the plastic profile are described in the subclaims.
Thus, in the preferred embodiment of the invention, the long side of the rectangular cross section shows a length of 15 mm to 25 mm, especially of 20 mm or 24 mm, and the short side of the rectangular cross section a length of 8 mm to 10 mm, especially of 9 mm.
For sealing particularly wide gaps, at least two identical plastic profiles are arranged in a row and connected with each other over a nominal crack point at one of the short places of the rectangular cross section which are opposite the rounded corner.
An endless band made of plastic profiles according to the invention with a corresponding simple and field-experienced usability is obtained by the fact that at least two identical plastic profiles are connected in series with each other over a nominal crack point on the short sides of the rectangular cross section, the at least one corner of which being rounded.
For fixing the plastic profile according to the invention for a mounting in a gap before wedging by closing the movable car body part, the adhesive means is placed at at least one long side of the rectangular as well as on the rounding of the cross section. Since an adhesive means is provided for on the rounding, a fitting in each desired angle is possible so that each gap width can be respectively taken into account.
The plastic profile is appropriately made of an absorbent material, in particular of a porous material such as for example foam.
The plastic profile is made of a material which resists to a surface treatment of the car body surface, in particular to enamelling.
There results a particularly simple and efficient arrangement if the bow-shaped side is configured as a cylinder cup partial segment of a cylinder with a certain radius or as a ball cup partial segment of a ball with a predetermined radius. This predetermined radius is for example 7 mm to 10 mm, in particular 8.5 mm or 8 mm.
For obtaining optimal transitions between reenamelled surfaces adjacent to the gap to be sealed and not reenamelled surfaces, the plastic profile is made of an absorbent porous material, in particular of foam.
According to a further embodiment, the adhesive means is placed in the rounded corner. This has the advantage that, with such a profile, each desired angle of the profile can be adjusted inside the gap.
The rounded corner is appropriately configured as an arc of a circle which preferably shows a radius of for example 7 mm to 10 mm, especially of 8.5 mm.
According to a further embodiment of the invention, the plastic profile consists of a profile with a rectangular cross section with longitudinal sides running parallel to each other and in profile longitudinal direction and with narrow sides running transversely to the profile longitudinal direction, a first narrow side of the two narrow sides being rounded and the rounded section showing an adhesive coating and changing to a linearly running section which runs obliquely to the second narrow side and which is prolongated over the longitudinal side of the profile by constituting an approximately triangular surface section and which changes into this with a section, and the second narrow side opposite the bow-shaped section changing into the longitudinal side of the profile by constituting a step over a section running obliquely in direction of the bow-shaped section.
Because of the applying of adhesive substance, it is necessary for this embodiment of a plastic profile that the strip-shaped profiles are set in in tilted position. This specific configuration of the profiles results from this since, for providing a perforation for the later cutting off of individual strips from a strip assembly, the perforation can be made by means of a roller crush cutter only in vertical direction.
Further advantageous configurations of the invention are the object of the subclaims.